Funmi Adewole

Class Description I Monday Night Improvisation | 2 October 2017

Groundation, Sensation, Connection
This workshop starts with a warm up in which we will explore principles found in many African dance styles – low centre of gravity, transference of weight, engaging the spine in the production vibrations, rotations, undulations through the body. The warm-up will provide a starting point for improvised dancing, alone and with others. The focus with be relationship and interaction - between body parts, individuals and space. There will be opportunity to watch each other explorations.

Choreographers and dance artists are often working at the crossroads of intersecting cultural, disciplinary, historical trajectories. ‘Border-thinking’ theorised by Walter Mignolo is a decolonial approach to thinking about epistemology. Amongst other theories, it has given me a way of looking at the issue of narrative and language and African dance aesthetics in the theatrical and professional dance context. The act of choreographing or creating dance-training systems which include African and Diaspora dances is particularly complex. What narratives are produced at the borders of different ways of seeing and being and dancing? And of what use are they?

Biography

'Funmi Adewole is a dance practitioner with a background in African dance drama, improvised dance and movement research.

‘Funmi Adewole began her career in performance when she relocated from Nigeria to Britain in the 1990s. Her credits include tours with Horse and Bamboo Mask and Puppetry Company, Ritual Arts, Banner Theatre, Adzido Pan-African Dance Ensemble, and the Chomondeleys. She holds a masters degree in Postcolonial Studies from Goldsmiths College. She is presently a lecturer in the dance department at De Montfort University, Leicester. Her research interests include dance and cultural politics and choreography and dance of Africa and the Diaspora. She continues to perform and also works as a dance dramaturge, mainly with choreographers who draw from social dance forms or work in a cross disciplinary context.